Don’t Ignore This

It’s easy to walk away. It’s easy – when things are getting tough, when they aren’t going the way that you want them to, when it seems like every decision goes against you. It’s easy to just pack it up and go. As a pastor, I’ve seen this before. Something happens in the church that somebody doesn’t like or agree with, so the standard process seems to be: complain, stop participating in other activities, complain some more, stop giving, keep complaining, try to get a group of people on “your” side, complain some more, and, eventually, leave. Usually, when something like this happens, it’s about the individual and their personal preferences. It’s a whole lot easier to walk away than to work through some of the changes that are happening. It’s easier to complain about them than to participate in them… especially if they are different… which changes tend to be.

In 2 Corinthians 6, Paul is pleading with the Corinthians to not walk away from the “marvelous gift of God’s kindness.” There were some bad things going on in Corinth at this time. In fact, in a lot of Paul’s churches, there were issues… that’s why he wrote some of these letters in the first place. It would have been easy for the Corinthians to just walk away and ignore the gift of God’s grace. It would have been easy for them to go back to their former life. But Paul pleads for them to not do this, to not ignore God’s grace in their lives. He uses his own life, and the life of his companions, as an example.

Given what they had to go through, it would have been easy for them to just walk away. He says in verse 5, “We have been beaten, put in prison, faced angry mobs, worked to exhaustion, endured sleepless nights and gone without food.” At any point, they could have just walk away from this life, and ignored God’s grace. They did not.

It’s easy for us to walk away. To go our own path, instead of living the life that God’s grace calls us to live. It’s not an easy life. There’s definitely no promise for smooth sailing. But let’s not ignore it.